Ira Backers Jeer Police At Killer`s Rites

May 14, 1987|By United Press International.

BELFAST — IRA supporters Wednesday jeered police during the funeral of one of the guerrilla group`s top assassins who led seven other ``martyrs`` killed in a security force ambush in an attack on a police station.

Dozens of wreaths--some sent by Irish Republican Army supporters in the United States--were laid before the coffin of James Lynagh, 32, who was described by one source as a ``deadly executioner.``

Lynagh`s coffin was put on display in a lawyer`s office, flanked by two masked men in combat uniforms. Hundreds of mourners--some wearing black armbands--filed past to pay their last respects to Lynagh, who led the eight- man squad ambushed Friday when they attacked a police station.

Police manned roadblocks and searched cars as IRA supporters flocked to Monaghan, 60 miles southwest of Belfast a few miles over the border.

At earlier IRA funerals, which passed off peacefully except for two brief scuffles, spokesmen for the IRA eulogized the eight men as the ``Loughgall martyrs`` and warned their deaths would be avenged, making veiled threats to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.